Headlines

Andy McCarthy

Rand Paul’s NSA lawsuit is frivolous

None of these differences makes a difference, though. Whether a person has a cognizable privacy interest in some piece of property or information has nothing to do with whether the police have a legitimate interest in him. You either have a protected privacy interest in something or you do not. The police need particularized suspicion and judicial permission to collect that something only if you have such an interest. If you do not, the police do not need suspicion or permission — no more than I needed them before thumbing through the phone book when I was a prosecutor.

The Supreme Court reasoned that you do not have a privacy interest in third-party records of your phone usage because you well know that your usage information is not private. As the justices put it, at the time you make any call, you are knowingly “conveying” that information to the phone company. That rationale has nothing to do with whether you are a crime suspect. And that rationale does not change based on whether the government is collecting usage records for one phone number or for 300 million.

There is no cognizable property interest or expectation of privacy, so that is the end of the matter as far as the Constitution is concerned. It should therefore be the end of Senator Paul’s lawsuit. But, as discussed above, it does not settle the question of statutory legality, much less the question of whether the policy, even if lawful, is an excessive intrusion on privacy.

Blowback

Note from Hot Air management: This section is for comments from Hot Air's community of registered readers. Please don't assume that Hot Air management agrees with or otherwise endorses any particular comment just because we let it stand. A reminder: Anyone who fails to comply with our terms of use may lose their posting privilege.

I am persuaded that the information collected is relevant. More important, the collection has been found relevant and thus lawful by 15 different federal judges. Those judges, appointed by administrations of both parties, now sit on the Foreign Intelligence Surveillance Court — a tribunal that, as I’ve recounted, is far from a rubber stamp.

There is no cognizable property interest or expectation of privacy, so that is the end of the matter as far as the Constitution is concerned. It should therefore be the end of Senator Paul’s lawsuit. But, as discussed above, it does not settle the question of statutory legality, much less the question of whether the policy, even if lawful, is an excessive intrusion on privacy.

Gee… I’m startin’ to think this is Joe McCarthy instead of Andy.

“The right of the people to be secure in their persons, houses, papers, and effects, against unreasonable searches and seizures, shall not be violated, and no Warrants shall issue, but upon probable cause, supported by Oath or affirmation, and particularly describing the place to be searched, and the persons or things to be seized.” (The Fourth Amendment verbatim)

Again, here’s what McCarthy doesn’t tell you: third parties are not required to give this information government unless the government has subpoena showing probable cause for demanding it, just like they have to do with you. Third parties then have the right to contest the demand in court. In this case, the government does neither, i.e., its has no probable cause for demanding it and the government denies the third parties their right to contest it in court.

In fact, the government does worse than that, because with one hand they blackmail the tel companies into helping with threats to harass them in both the business setting and personally, and with other hand they bribe them to cooperate by annually paying them handsome profits. So think about this — the government is using your tax money to pay the third party tel companies millions of dollars to keep their records of your activity pretty much forever so they can download store and peruse it whenever they feel like it based on some facetious “need” a crony court is set up to bless but no one outside of a few people in the NSA and the few judges on the court ever know about.

On last thing, on a side issue with respect to the tel companies having all this data that the federal government has access to. The tel companies have it because they are under orders to never delete any of it, or throw it out, or dispose of it. The data they hold is by far beyond any time limit set for normal records management required of other companies. In fact, IIRC, there has directive from the DOJ, renewed annually or something, for the tel companies to not dispose of anything.

How would you like it if the DOJ sent out a directive for all citizens to never throw anything out because they might need it to prosecute you or someone else and they’ll need that info you have?

We are way past corrupt and well into evil. I hope Andy rots in hell for his facilitation of this evil.

Seriously, who gives a sh!t what the stats show. If the NSA wants to make the court look like it’s doing its job in being tough on the NSA, all they have to do is jack up the number of requests they know will be turned down. Heck, they could probably make the number of refusals 60% if they wanted to make the court look like magnificent protectors of the people’s rights just by manipulating the requests.

It’s a publicity stunt; that’s what senators have to do to keep their names in the current news.

thebrokenrattle on February 15, 2014 at 9:22 PM

Yes this might end up as nothing but a publicity stunt for Paul, but it also keeps the NSA and what means they go through to get information on American citizens in the news. Even if the courts side with the NSA, that doesn’t excuse the actions they have undertaken.

Politically speaking, this is a shrewd move on Senator Paul’s part. Even if he loses, he wins.

We wouldn’t know any of this if it wasn’t for Snowden. The NSA – Clapper – originally denied it until they couldn’t any longer. What else are they lying about? There is significant speculation that they actually record your calls, emails and texts . We live, at least in theory, in a Constitutional Republic; there should not be secret courts that issue general warrants. Give these tyrants hell Rand.

We are way past corrupt and well into evil. I hope Andy rots in hell for his facilitation of this evil.

Dusty on February 15, 2014 at 9:25 PM

Without going into details, I’ll just say I was associated with a Telco and finally quit over my ethical values. I think the brink for me was when I learned of a CO tech in Cali blowing the whistle on ‘mirroring’ transcontinental cables in a room off limits to Telco personnel. It changed a presidency. If the NYT’s (which had this story- suppressed by the FBI) had published this when it had happened- it’s entirely likely G.W. Bush would have lost the 2004 election. The NYT’s published later that year.
Obama? He’s doubled down on these infringements. Eight cases of prosecuting whistle blowers under the 1917 Espionage Act*- more than all previous presidents combined.
Fun Fact: Elected officials go home one day. Military folks and the unseen intelligence contractors have jobs for life. They see the politicians come and go. They stay. They see. They remember.
And that’s a huge @$$ problem.

Whoever fights monsters should see to it that in the process he does not become a monster. And if you gaze long enough into an abyss, the abyss will gaze back into you.

Assume for the moment McCarthy is right regarding the law. So what? The Left launches genuinely frivolous lawsuits constantly. Even if when they don’t win in a courtroom, they triumph by delaying their enemies or bringing publicity to their cause.